Morning Brief — March 5, 2014

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Cooler heads prevailing in Crimea, but for how long? — Western money flows in to Kyiv — Russia tests long-range missiles and seizes others — Europe torn with how to deal with neighbour’s aggression — Canada cuts all planned events with Russia — War drums calm usual vitriol in Ottawa — Tories going all green, and not just in prep for St. Patrick’s Day — Opposition motion into Brad Butt’s fib squashed — Raitt works through grain crisis — Kenney officially gives in to Quebec on job grants — B.C. union to push Clark government to bump minimum wage by nearly $6k a year — China plans massive military spending increase — Diplomatic squabbles in the Persian Gulf — Trial for Al Jazeera journalists, including Canadian, resumes in Cairo — Oldest profession gets newest course — and a brilliant essay on democracy.

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A good Wednesday morning to you. It’s the first day of Lent so it’s time to give something up. For Vladimir Putin, we suggest that be Crimea.

As U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson is purported to have said in 1918, “the first casualty when war comes is truth.” For the best up-to-date coverage of developments in Ukraine, visit the dedicated Ukraine sites of the Wall Street Journal (which has a stellar team in Eastern Europe), the BBC (with live video), or Al Jazeera.

Still, one has to wonder how much Putin really wants peace when he decided to go ahead with yesterday’s planned test launch of an long-range ICBM. Still with missiles, the Ukraine news service Interfax reports this morning that Russian troops have seized two Ukrainian missile defence units in Crimea, though the Ukraine military has not confirmed this.

Back in Ottawa, PM Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird are keeping up what little international pressure Canada can bring to bear. Harper announced yesterday the immediate cancellation of all planned bilateral military exercises, including NORAD’s Exercise Vigilant Eagle, as well as all scheduled meetings. “We continue to view the situation in Ukraine with the gravest concern and will continue to review our relations with President Putin’s government accordingly,” Harper said.

Doubtless, Ukraine will dominate discussion at party caucus meetings today, as a rare unanimity and civility seems to have gripped the Commons. While they might all agree on the broad strokes needed in Eastern Europe, that spirit of cooperation and conviviality can’t afford to creep into other aspects of legislative life.

Between exploding rail cars and crippling wheat traffic jams, it’s not hard to see the Transport Minister Lisa Raitt might be the busiest minister in cabinet, notwithstanding Baird’s week of shuttle diplomacy. Raitt met over the weekend with the CEOs of Canada’s two national railways to discuss breaking through the grain backlog in Western Canada. Raitt said both railways promised to ship more than 13,000 cars a week once the cold weather breaks.

Quebec officially got what it wanted from the Canada Job Grant — all the money and none of the strings. Employment minister Jason Kenney all but waived a white flag in saying the federal government will opt to renew the expiring skills training agreement with Quebec, saying the province’s training system didn’t need fixing.

B.C.’s unions have an idea for heating up the economy and attracting new blood to the province — raise the minimum wage by $6,000 a year. A delegation of union heads are scheduled to meet with Premier Christy Clark and Jobs Minister Shirley Bond today and are expected to propose taking the province’s minimum wage from $10.25 to $13. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, labour leaders contend. Given the dramatic labour shortages in the West, very few people actually receive minimum wage anyway, and businesses are forced to import expensive temporary foreign workers to cover jobs in agriculture and service industries.

Here and there:

Commons question period gets underway at 2:15 p.m..

Premier Pauline Marois holds a cabinet meeting and is then expected to call an election for April 7.

David Orazietti, minister of Natural Resources, announces this year’s Species at Risk Stewardship Fund projects and showcase how the government is helping protect bats in Toronto.

Premier Wynne to meet with Robert Ghiz, Premier of Prince Edward Island, in Toronto to discuss a solution for getting Canadians the retirement security they deserve and need.

Here’s what committee members will be getting up to on Parliament Hill today, care of our friends at The Alpheus Group:

Minister Chris Alexander and senior officials will field questions at the citizenship and immigration committee relating to the supplementary estimates. Members will then hear from legal experts and the Canadian Council for Refugees as part of the study on the protection of women in Canada’s immigration system.

Foreign affairs committee members will convene to consider the situation in Syria. UN Assistant Secretary General, Nigel Fisher, from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs will provide testimony before the committee goes behind closed doors to hear from a representative of Doctors Without Borders.

The study on eating disorders amongst girls and women will continue at the Status of Women committee.

Members of the industry committee will resume their study of Canada’s entertainment software industry and will hear from president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada. During the second half of the meeting the committee will shift gears to review Supplementary Estimates with officials from several research councils and senior industry officials.

Senators at the foreign affairs and international trade committee will continue their examination of the security conditions and economic developments in the Asia-Pacific region.

Representatives of the Canadian Bar Association, Criminal Lawyers’ Association, and the Toronto Police Association are slated to appear before senators at the legal and constitutional affairs committee as part of the hearings on Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act (mental disorder).

Senators on the social affairs, science and technology committee will have the opportunity to question RCMP and CBSA officials as part of their study on prescription pharmaceuticals and will focus on the nature of unintended consequences in the use of prescriptions.

Aboriginal Peoples will seek information on the challenges relating to First Nations infrastructure on reserves when they hear from Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation and the First Nations of Alberta Technical Services Advisory Group.

CRTC witnesses are scheduled to appear before senators on the transport and communications committee to provide insight on the challenges faced by the CBC as a result of the changing broadcasting and communications environment.

In international news…

China is planning a massive increase in military spending over the next three years. The government announced this morning that it intends to increase the defence budget by 12.2 per cent this year to 808.23 billion yuan ($131.57 billion), with developing new high-tech weapons and beefing up coastal and air defences as priorities.

The crisis in Ukraine has gone into its rhetorical overkill stage, with politicians tripping over themselves to draw links to the Second World War. Paul Adams says Foreign Minister John Baird’s bluster on Ukraine — comparing Vladimir Putin’s Crimean excursion to Hitler’s 1938 land grab in Czechoslovakia — is nothing but rhetorical cover for the fact that Canada can’t (or won’t) do anything useful to bring Russia to heel.

Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky reminds us that, while Russia’s actions in Crimea are outrageous, Putin’s not entirely wrong about what happened in Kyiv: It was a coup (a popular one) and there has been a backlash against Russian-speaking Ukrainians — just not a fascist-inspired one.

This year — for once — the Harper government tabled its budget before the Main Estimates, meaning that — for once — it had an opportunity to reconcile the spending figures in the budget with those in the Estimates, giving Members of Parliament a single, sane set up numbers to put to a vote. They didn’t do it, and Scott Clark and Peter DeVries want to know why.

Speaking of loopholes: Oil companies like Enbridge exploit a massive one when they submit pipeline projects like Northern Gateway to NEB reviews, says The Tyee’s Robyn Allan. By low-balling a pipeline’s capacity when applying for regulatory approval, a company can always come back after approval and ask for much more capacity — which allows them access to ‘fast-track’ approval with fewer environmental hurdles.

Finally, Bloomberg’s Francis Wilkinson argues that America’s religious right has lost much of the enormous political clout it wielded in the 1980s and 1990s — in part because Americans have gotten so used to gay celebrities they simply can’t see them as a threat anymore.

It’s certainly not for everyone, but there’s now a course available for people interested in getting into the world’s oldest profession. It means going to Spain, but for €45 (about $60), aspiring sex workers can receive a four-hour intensive course given by the Asociación de Profesionales del Sexo, a group of eight sex workers who lobby for better rights for those in the industry.